For just a moment Josepha hesitated, then she gave the apparent stranger her hand, and they stood laughing and chatting together, until the ponies were at hand, and had to be taken away for another calming exercise.
“I hevn’t seen you, Josepha, for twenty-four years and five months and four days. I was counting the space that divided us yesterday, when somebody told me about this meeting of Annis women, and I thought, ‘I will just go to Annis, and hang round till I get a glimpse of her.’”
“Well, John Thomas,” she answered, “it is mainly thy awn fault. Thou hed no business to quarrel with Antony.”
“It was Antony’s fault.”
“No, it was not.”
“Well, then, it was all my fault.”
“Ay, thou must stick to that side of the quarrel, or I’ll not hev to know thee,” and both laughed and shook hands again. Then she stepped into her carriage, and Bradley said:
“But I shall see thee again, surely?”
“It might so happen,” she answered with a pretty wave of her hand. And all the way home she was wandering what good or evil Fate had brought John Thomas Bradley into her life again.
When she got back to the Hall, she noticed that her sister-in-law was worried, and she asked, “What is bothering thee now, Annie?”